


For Old Times' Sake

by tiger_moran



Category: Ripper Street, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:52:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake is reunited with an old acquaintance. (Moran/Drake with implied Moran/Moriarty)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Old Times' Sake

**Author's Note:**

> Moran is based on Paul Anderson's portrayal from Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows although this is set some time vaguely before both AGoS and Ripper Street.

   Moran isn’t gentle, same as the old days, but that’s all right by Drake. This isn’t love, after all. Maybe it’s a bit more than just sex though; maybe it’s… well, call it nostalgia, although the colonel has changed somewhat since Drake last saw him. He seems more content; a little calmer. He still fucks like a wild animal though; still nips at Drake’s throat and chest and holds him down with bruising force. After though, he lies still; doesn’t move away instantly, just lies there behind Drake, still moulded to his bare back. He’d never have done that before he took up with that professor of his. Perhaps the man – enigma that he may be - has had a calming influence on Moran.

    Not love. Moran has always insisted he doesn’t do love and Drake, well, he’s sought companionship and comfort in the arms of men from time to time, because there have been times when such things have been the only way to get through not even the night but the next hour. War is hard on men; it was hard on Drake. It certainly seems to have been hard on Colonel Moran too, although Drake thinks Moran – mad old Moran – was probably never fully sane even before he saw a battle. Drake knows that look though – the haunted look of a man who’s seen horrors that he will never speak of; who has walked through blood and fire and come back _changed_ , and perhaps not for the better. He sees it every time he catches sight of his reflection.

    He’d know Sebastian Moran anywhere though. Older now, with many more lines around his eyes and a bit of grey in his beard; more scars marking his body too, but still Moran. Still regarding him slyly, with amusement glittering in his blue eyes, as if he knows something infinitely hilarious about Drake but he’ll never let on what. Still smoking like a chimney too, although it seems he’s changed his blend of tobacco since the last time they met.

    Drake hadn’t expected to see him again, not in this lifetime anyway (in hell though, maybe), but when he’d glimpsed that lean, furtive figure in the shadows of a Whitechapel alleyway, he knew who it was even before he saw his face. Knew that it was Moran, the best marksman in the British army, but who’d returned to London under a black cloud, the words _dishonourable discharge_ clinging to him like the stink of a slaughterhouse. Not that Moran seemed to care much – he was cocky as ever, eyeing Drake with that twinkle in his eye and his mouth quirked into a crooked smile, a cigarette between his lips and hat tilted at a rather rakish angle.

    Drake had half-expected Moran to have taken up with some criminal gang or other, turning against the queen and country he fought for not so long ago in India; in Afghanistan. It was a surprise to find out that Moran is actually now in the employment of a mathematics professor.

    “Detective Sergeant,” Moran had said, seeming to roll the words around in his mouth, trying them out, testing how they sounded, and finding them somehow also amusing.

    And Drake, who knows about these things better than many; better than Inspector Reid, certainly (for as good as he may be, he’s not like Drake; he hasn’t seen the things Drake has seen), could sense the danger about the man. It was as if one of those wild beasts that apparently Moran was so fond of hunting in India was there in front of him, dressed in a rather plain tweed suit and a dark overcoat; in hat and gloves, his ever-present cigarette smouldering away. Drake is not a man who shies from danger though. To the contrary…

    And so, later (but not _that_ much later) they came to this; to Moran leading him to a bed in a rather nice townhouse that would clearly be well beyond Drake’s salary; Moran pressing him back against clean sheets; Moran’s mouth on his; Moran’s strong, rough hands holding him down as they locked together in a very intimate, very _illegal_ sort of embrace.

    It had been a long time since Drake had been with another man, but there are some things that you never forget how to do and Moran… well he certainly hadn’t forgotten how best to reduce Drake to incoherent groans and gasps of pleasure.

    So now they lie quietly for a moment, the sweat cooling on their naked bodies, and Drake waits for his heart to stop racing.

    “You believe in that mystic mumbo-jumbo?” Moran asks, trailing his fingers over the inked design on Drake’s arm, amusement and more than a little scorn evident in his tone. “Helps you get through the night, does it?”

    “S’pose you prefer the whisky to see you through.” Drake grins and rolls over to face Moran, blue eyes meeting blue. There’s still that coldness in Moran’s, and that queer shifting sideways look of his, like Moran doesn’t think he’s worth looking at for more than a second, but he chuckles now.

    “Aye, whisky beats superstition any day.” He leans forward and presses a kiss to Drake’s lips. “You want to ask,” he says after a few moments.

    “Will you answer?”

    “I might.”

    “Well then.” Drake regards him steadily for a moment. “What in god’s name are you doing working for this professor?”

    “I’m his personal secretary.”

    “ _Very_ personal.”

    Moran raises an eyebrow at him but keeps his lips pressed tightly together as he shifts off the bed now. “Infer what you wish,” he says over his shoulder. There’s no malice in the statement though – he truly doesn’t seem to care what the sergeant thinks he gets up to with Moriarty, or else he’d prefer that Drake thinks him a mere plaything; a pet, rather than learn the truth of the matter.

    Drake watches him light up a cigarette and stand there at the foot of the bed. Maybe, he thinks, eyeing Moran’s naked form, he should be ashamed of this, but he’s not. Perhaps this sin seems inconsequential besides some of his others.

    “Thought you’d be wed by now,” Moran says. “Have a pretty wife, couple of little Drakes.”

    Drake glances away. “What have I got to offer a wife?”

    Moran’s gaze slips over him once again but he says nothing.

    “Haven’t _you_ wanted to marry?” Drake asks.

    Moran laughs. “I ain’t the marrying kind.”

    “Aye, but I never thought you were the kind to be a kept man for some toff either.”

   “I ain’t a kept man. He pays me for the work I do for him.”

    Now Drake chuckles. “What, warming his bed; playing backgammon?”

    Moran lunges at him, gripping Drake’s blond hair in his fist, tilting his face up. He catches Drake’s mouth in a kiss that’s more vicious than those of earlier; gets his knee between Drake’s thighs and somehow tips the sergeant back onto the bed whilst still managing to hold onto his cigarette. “Are you judging me, Ben?” he asks in a low tone, voice gruff and breath warm against Drake’s ear.

    “Not at all, Colonel.” Drake trails his fingertips lightly up Moran’s sides. “Curious, is all.” He’s strong, is Moran, all wiry strength, and Drake is a fighter; knows how to use his fists, but if Moran got it into his head to harm him he’s not thoroughly convinced he’d survive it.

    But the colonel just licks and kisses his way down Drake’s neck, tongue trailing over the pulse-point in his throat, before shifting back to sit beside him.

    “Curious.” He gives a grimace of distaste, then glowers at his companion as Drake plucks the cigarette from between his long fingers and takes a drag on it himself, even though the tobacco is not to his taste. “Curiosity is what gets men killed – men _and_ beasts.” He thinks briefly of tigers, lured in by the bleating of a goat.

    “Ain’t got _you_ killed,” Drake observes. “ _Yet._ ” He offers the cigarette back to Moran.

    “Mm.” Moran takes another pull on the fag and stares off into space for a moment.

    Drake watches him through the smoke haze. “One day I reckon you’ll cross the line,” he says, “and then I’ll have to arrest you.”

    Moran flashes him a grin – one peculiarly feral in appearance. “Then, my dear Bennet, maybe I’ll be obliged to kill you first.”

    Drake smiles, although they both know that perhaps Moran is not entirely joking. There has to be more to this Professor James Moriarty than meets the eye – Moran wouldn’t have been drawn to him otherwise.

    “Course I’ll be sure to do it quick,” Moran says, still grinning at him, “for old times’ sake.”

    Maybe it’s not the most appropriate reaction to a veiled threat of murder, but Bennet Drake throws back his head and laughs. 


End file.
